


Wreaths of Pyanepsion

by fresne



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Ariadne daughter of Titans, Other, POV Ariadne, Yuletide Treat, mpreg - cuz mythology, yuletide2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 07:12:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13118709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: Come muses. Sing to me of nimble stepping Ariadne of the Labyrinth in whose veins ran the blood of the Titans. Of the sun and the ocean. Tell me the story of dark spaces in this time in the dark of the year. Play a melody and tell me of love.Come muses. Make the bay laurel wreath for the time of the little madness. Let us make our wreaths and bind them with ribbons of white and purple for song-wringing Apollo and wild-eyed Dionysus. Let us beg their aid. And if that aid fails, let us hang upon our wreaths reminders of all the words and deeds that we regret. So that we may burn them with spring.Come muses. Tell me a tale of light-haired Ariadne and her lover. Do not stint with the wine for I have a desire to dive into a story tonight.





	Wreaths of Pyanepsion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lesserstorm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lesserstorm/gifts).



The sun's rays were hot on Ariadne's skin. The air in the stand of bay laurel trees was rich with the scent of sun baked laurel leaves, sweet grass and earth. The last gasp of summer before the biting winter rains and storm's thrash. Demeter and Persephone enjoying a last cup of light before the inevitable descent. The little madness that came of being indoors.

When Ariadne's grandfather, Helios, drove the chariot of the sun, there had been no winter, or so Grandmother Perseis said when Ariadne visited her in her prison below the earth. Grandfather Helios did not speak. Only blazed angrily in the dark.

Mighty Crete was the gateway and Father, great mortal king, had been given dominion over the doors in return for certain sacrifices.

So, Mother married him. Fought and cursed and bore children, and now Ariadne raised her face to the chariot that was now Apollo's to drive. Swung her labrys at a Bay branch as a mortal princess might do for the Pyanespsion festival.

"Ariadne, must you be so loud," said Mother from where she was lounging in her pavilion woven from opium smoke and strands of darkness all the better to cast her light. Her voice threaded and pierced the beams of sunlight. "The sun is too bright today." Mother always shone like the moon that had been her dominion once.

Father said, "The winter storms will start soon enough and sacrifices must be made, or why else would we have dragged ourselves up this hill?"

"It's too bright," said Mother. She waved at Ariadne. "Gather your laurel more quietly."

The lords and ladies of the court laughed carefully as if their Majesties were jesting. Where once musicians would have played autumn hymns to tempt dryads into festival dancing, now they was only the sound of saws and axes. Father had forbidden music and dancing since her brother, Androgeus, Father's favorite, had fallen to the Marathonian Bull. Once the Cretan Bull. Once Poseiden's Bull for sacrifice.

Fallen. Sacrifice. Such words. Such a story.

In answer to her thoughts, the other trapped member of her family bellowed his rage from the Labyrinth. Terror. Loneliness. The earth rocked as a boat on the ocean might at the force of his suffering.

The court of Crete was careful not to react to the earth's shudders. To the sound of what they thought was Father's shame. It was shameful, that sound, if not in the way those lords and ladies might think.

A strand of ivy brushed her ankle. Soft and supple. She did not shiver at the touch. She leaned into it. She bent down and plucked a willing strand. Wove a quick crown to comfort her head. She should not accept even such a minor gift.

Mother frowned at her. A dark look.

Ariadne kept innocence on her face. She was doing nothing wrong. She was a mortal princess. Ariadne pressed the head of her labrys to the crook of a laurel branch and pushed until the blade split through the brown bark and through the rim of green to the white wood below.

"Foolish girl. You'll never cut through it that way," said Father. He gripped a long supple branch in a hard hand, his thumb nail thick and yellowed again the light brown bark, bending it so the leaves brushed the red earth like helpless fingers. The branch creaked. Father ripped the branch off of the laurel tree, taking a long strip of brown bark with it. The tree shuddered.

"Too loud," said Mother. "Here I am sick with childbed. Suckling another of your mortal infants." She plucked squirming Catreus from her breast and handed him to a very nervous maid.

"Then perhaps you shouldn't have cursed my seed to transform into serpents and scorpions." Father struck the air with his laurel branch. "To kill any I might lie with other than my immortal wife."

Mother laughed. A sound as light and lifting as a leaf spun on a breeze. Cold as the winter that was to come. She shifted the darkness of her pavilion. "You think me less jealous than any other god." Her smile was the moon that was once her dominion. She patted the couch beside her. "Here love. Sit beside me. It's a lovely day to remain in the shade."

Father inhaled sharply and struck the air again with the branch.

Her younger brother, Glaucus, took little Phaedra's hand. "The branches are too high here. Let's look for something lower." He limped farther up the hill. Away from the court and the pavilion and away.

The story was that when Glaucus was little, he'd been playing with a ball or a mouse, and fallen in a jar of honey and died. A seer brought him back to life, but the Unseen One's dog gripped Glaucus' heel tight as he returned from the shadowlands. This was why he limped.

It was a story. As much as the one spread about that Mother would have required an inventor to couple with a sacred bull to bear such a son as Asterios, their brother sprung fully grown into the world with a head of a bull. With a head the head of Poseidon's bull.

Their parents' voices grew louder behind them, disturbing a flock of woodbines.

Such a pleasant story.

They went farther up. Ariadne's ivy crown caressed her cheek.

Out of Father's sight, Ariadne laid her hand on the bole of a Bay tree and asked kindly, "May we have an offering for the season of the little madness?"

The laurel gave. Laurels were kind and gentle trees. They gave when asked.

A wild grape cascading over a hillock waved a brilliant red leaf at her. She smiled even though she shouldn't. She took a ruby leaf even though she shouldn't and threaded it into her crown. She brushed her hand through her hair and pulled a few glowing strands free. Their light hardly noticeable on such a sunny day. She gifted them to the wild grape with a whispered, "Stay warm in the winter that is to come."

Ariadne sat down next to Phaedra, whose hair and eyes glowed like the moon. Glaucus, to all appearances, took after Father and added no gleaming to the grove.

They set to weaving the branches of laurel into wreaths. Ariadne said, "Watch carefully." She plucked a dusty strand of sunshine and wove it with another and another. Soon she had a pretty yellow ribbon to tie Phaedra's wreath together.

"It's so pretty," said Phaedra. "I'll never learn how to do that as well as you."

"Don't worry. Your sister doesn't know how either," said Mother riding a great horned serpent up the hill under her personal cloud. "Her ribbons are filthy." Mother reached out and shook the dust from the sunbeams. She twisted and stripped away the yellow from the light with a sharp blue thumb. Fragile as a wave. Soon, her hands were full of blazing white ribbons. She tossed them to Ariadne and clouded on her way back to the palace.

As soon as she was out of sight, Glaucus said in a tone as dry as a long emptied amphora, "If only I had the gift of prophecy, I could have known what a pleasant family outing this would be."

Ariadne suppressed a smile. "That's not funny."

"It's a little funny." He bent down to Phaedra. "Not even a little smile." He pulled his lips down in a frown. "A tiny, little, itty, bitty smile. After Mother was so kind as to give us each a ribbon for our wreaths to remind us of her during the season of the little madness."

Phaedra's smile lit the grove.

Ariadne tied one of the blazing ribbons to her wreath.

However, when it came time to make Asterios' wreath, she caused sweet grasses to grow. Coaxed berries to hang from a nearby vine. Wove them into the wreath.

"You're supposed to decorate the wreaths with things that we want to forget," said Glaucus. "To burn at the end of the season." She looked at him. He put his hand on her shoulder and said, "I know. I miss him too." Neither of them spoke about the spring. About what else would happen. He helped her gather fragrant rosemary and other herbs to braid into the wreath.

He didn't go with her when she went into the Labyrinth. He held Phaedra's hand. He stood by as the guards locked the door behind her. Her brother. Her father's son. The one who had not died fighting the Marathonian bull at the Panathenia. The Cretan bull. Poseidon's bull.

A tragic story. Such a tragic story.

Ariade spilled a drop of her blood on the black earth as she had the day the labyrinth was grown. She could still feel Aunt Circe's hand upon her hand as she made the cut. She wove the drop into a red thread that spooled out as she walked the familiar steps. It wasn't to guide her way. A labyrinth had only one way in and one way out after all and she was the mistress of this place.

She did not need a torch for light in dark. She was the light.

She set aside her golden shoes at the long outer arch. She set aside her crown of ivy at the sudden curve with an apology to the leaves. It glowed gently with a few stolen strands of her hair. She took off her vest embroidered with light and dark. She was dressed as simply as a mortal child when she came to where Asterios waited, his chest heaving and wet with sweat. His bare body streaked with blood from where he'd injured himself crashing against his cage's walls. He tossed his bull's head and bellowed.

He could no longer speak to tell a tale.

"Shhhh, shhhh, shhhh. I'm here." She tended his wounds. He'd heal without her help, but he'd heal more cleanly with it. She curried the white starlight gleaming hair upon his head until he was quiet. She wrapped a blanket around him. "Be calm, love."

He snorted at her.

She felt helpless. Worse than that. Complicit. She said, "I made you a wreath for Pyanepsion." She hung it from a high hook on the wall. She guided her brother to the wreath. "Breath this and remember the world above."

He shook his head. His bull's head with its long deadly horns. He'd killed men with them when it had happened. Tossed them in the air. Gored bodies. She laid her hands on them as if she were one of the bull leapers. "Will you be calm?" He jerked away from her. Scratched at the wall with a horn. She pretended that she couldn't read what he wrote there.

She checked the clay pipe that trickled from the wall. The water was good and pure. Asterios could no longer drink from a cup. She checked the hay in his manger. He could no longer eat meat. He was still man enough to use the plumbing for which Crete was famous. Among other things.

She tied the red thread to the wreath. She said, "Tug on the thread and I'll feel it. I'll come to you. This will be over in the spring." She felt gorge rise in her throat as she said that. It would never be over.

He moaned. Slammed a hand against the wall. Shook the earth. The blanket slipped away as he gave way again to rage.

She left him. She went to the door. A guard let her out. He was deferential. "Are you going back to the palace, princess?"

She should answer yes. That would be the rational thing. The reasonable thing. The day's sunshine had given way to a cold wind blowing clouds across the callous moon, Artemis' stolen chariot.

She should join Mother. She should work to improve her weaving. She should buckle to the little madness that came of being locked in doors against the winter.

She headed into the hills above the palace. She went to where forbidden music breathed out of one of the many caves. She went as if pulled by a thread, although she chose each footstep she took.

The beautiful dancer with flushed cheeks greeted her at the cave's exhaling mouth. "Mistress of Dance, Holy One, welcome." The girl, the boy, the dancer's lips were wine wet. Eyes candle soft and wintering wild. Dionysus in all their splendor beckoned her inside.

Ariadne should walk away. She went inside the cave full of sweating bodies moving to a wild beat. Unlawful. Forbidden. She gave way to the driving rhythm. She took a cup from Dionysus' hand. Drank deeply. Flicked feet. Leapt. 

Laughter, a warm rush against her ear. A brush of fragrant hair. An arm around her arm. Spinning her. "You're not wearing the crown I gave you." Dionysus grinned at her.

"Does the grape make the wine." She answered. "You gave the materials, but I made the crown and I set it aside."

She should leave. Rip herself away. This was the enemy or so she'd be told. God's blood to her Titanic decent. She gave way to the greater madness without further banter.

She kissed lips slick with wine and drank down intoxication with a fishing tongue. Her great grandfather had been the ocean. She was as tender as the ocean then. She laughed and danced and grappled with her lover in the midst of a crowd.

Furious and sudden, wildness led to wildness. To bodies falling to the hard earth. To scratching fingers and teeth on flesh. They took each other in all the ways that could be done and invented several more. The beat of the drums was the beat of their bodies. Toasts and laughter from the crowd as they strove against each other. Ariadne would be exposed if she kept this up.

Ariadne was completely exposed. Bare. Naked. In passion's aftermath, soft and loose in her lover's arms. Who laughed, hugged her and said, "A play. The abduction of Persephone." It was dangerous to linger and chance discovery. Ridiculous to recline on a bed of ivy and grape vines that had grown while they coupled and watch a miscast play put on by intoxicated dancers as the night grew still in contemplation.

The play was unique. The Unseen One was played by a plump vintner, who declaimed her loneliness with a cup all through the abduction. Persephone was a wild eyed boy with a wine stained birthmark over half his face and eager, so very eager, to be away from Demeter, a farmer with callouses on her callouses. When the players remembered who they were.

Lines were plucked from the air like offerings to the deity lounging on a bed of grapes and ivy.

Demeter declaimed her sorrow to a wall. Had to be spun around again by a Hecate who volunteered from the crowd. Apollo was the one of the musicians. She was quite good. Her lover, played Hermes with great mincing steps on sturdy bull leaper's legs.

It was funny. Bordered on some numinous, luminous, almost to be reached philosophical truth. In between gasps of laughter.

"Run away with me." Dionysus stroked soft fingers down the interior of her arm. Shifted beneath her and began again the act of love. "Come," a breathe in her ear, "away with me. I'm intoxicated with love of you."

"You're just intoxicated." She pushed Dionysus' shoulder. A playful shove that became a caress.

They softly touched through all the hour or so of the playful play, the tension of touch and the repeated words poured a cup of sorrow into her heart.

Her, "I can't go with you," was a sob met with a kiss as they softly came again together.

The play went on. Something to do with pomegranates and wine.

Dionysus said, "I can wait."

Ariadne was once more reminded that wine and madness are not always wild. There was also the long amphora's wait in the dark.

"I have," Dionysus said with a kiss, "put something in motion, which is almost ready to be consumed."

She should fear whatever that might be. That was the only reasonable thing. She tried to drown her sorrow in the cup of Dionysus' mouth.

A shriek at the cave's mouth. "Traitor!" Mother's hard-soft hand dragging her up. "Consorting with the enemy."

For whatever reason, this made Ariadne laugh.

Dionysus laughed low and rippling through the crowd. "She refuses to be my consort."

Ah, there was the reason for laughter.

Mother dragged her back and out. The cold night air on naked flesh a sudden shock even to flesh that was always sun warm. "The gods took everything from us. Chained our family below the earth. You see what they did to your brother!"

Ariadne wanted to ask which one. Androgeus or Asterion. She knew better. She gathered wine stains and night air into a robe to cover herself. It was thin, but better than nothing. As she was dragged through the sober air, she resolved to do better. To turn away from madness.

Mother pulled her through the court gathering a wave of knowing looks from those courtiers who were still away. Until they crashed into the royal chambers. Mother put some half dozen dried pomegranate seeds coated in pine pitch in her hands. "Take these so nothing will grow of your idiocy." Mother flung Ariadne into her room and slammed the door shut.

"Ariadne, what is it?" asked Phaedra.

"Just a little madness," said Ariadne. "Go back to sleep."

She held the seeds. Of her own volition, she'd taken them after each encounter with her lover. Now commanded, she went to the adjoining bathing chamber and dropped the seeds one by one into the plumbing that was the wonder of the ancient world and Daedalus's craft.

She lay down on her bed and looked dry eyed at the darkness. She put her hand upon her belly and smiled grimly to think of Mother's reaction at what must surely grow from coupling with a fertility deity. Contrarily wished that the season of the little madness would go slowly. Last forever.

It didn't.

It only seemed to as Mother and Father circled and raged at each other while outside winter storms tossed the wine dark sea and showered the wintering fields. There were also the poisonous serpents and scorpions crawling around the palace, which as Glaucus said, "Let's agree to never speak of where these must be," he contemplated a painted fresco of leaping dolphins, "coming from."

"You are not funny," said Ariadne crushing another of the little white scorpions with a golden slipper.

"Not even a little," said Glaucus.

"I don't understand. Are they coming up through the plumbing?" asked Phaedra.

"No." Ariadne glared at her brother. "You can explain it to her."

As she often did, she felt Asterion tug upon the red thread. She followed it into the earth. She sat next to him. A darkness lit by their light. They were silent. There, deep in the earth, the sound of storms were far away. They were left with only the waiting of winter. Asterion's endless wait. He scratched again his plea against a wall. She pretended that she couldn't read it and the hundreds of similar requests covering the walls of the Labyrinth.

When she emerged from the Laybrinth, it was to find that Glaucus and Phaedra had decorated their wreaths with dead scorpions.

She decorated hers with tiny cups and little labrys. Phaedra asked her why, but Ariadne wouldn't answer. She would do her best to ensure that Phaedra never knew.

She did not decorate her wreath with pomegranate seeds coated in pine pitch. She grew a bunch of rue flowers once, but she threw them in the toilet. Along with vomiting her breakfast.

"Are you sick," asked Phaedra. "Should I get Mother?"

"No, it's just something I didn't eat." Ariadne drank some water cleansed by the clever clay pipes. "Don't worry, little one. I'll tell Mother when I'm ready." She wondered when was the right time to tell Mother that she was pregnant with the enemy's child. Grimaced to think how delighted Father would be to have another tie to the gods.

The winter passed like that.

Too soon the spring. Too soon they tossed their wreaths into the fire for the festival of Anthesteria. Silent lyres and dusty flutes for what should have been a celebration of dance and joy.

Too soon came the black sailed ship from Athens with their cargo.

Mother smiled grimly at Father. "I won't do it."

"I don't need you to," said Father, whose hand gripped tight on Ariadne's shoulder. It hurt. It always hurt. "Ariadne can do your part to honor the gods." Father put the golden cup in her hand. "You have to do it for your brother. The gods demand this sacrifice."

Mother laughed. The sound of winter when spring was emerging in the hills. "You're the one who didn't sacrifice Poseidon's bull."

"At your conniving," roared Father, his hand tighter still. "It was meant to be a sacrifice."

"The bull that they say I coupled with to beget a son with a bull's head." Mother came closer. "The gods have marked the sacrifice they want. They won't be paid off with Athenian blood."

Mother and Father towered over Ariadne. Their fierce breath raging over her. Titans. "Why not. They always have." Father pushed Ariadne away, certain she'd do what he wanted, and why shouldn't he? She always had.

Glaucus left as soon as he could. Away to the port and the ships. Away from the palace and what went on there. He wasn't burned with a cup. But then again, he had never been Father's favorite. Not marked with the strength of Titans. Not marked.

Ariadne went to greet the Athenians alone. Seven beautiful youths and seven beautiful maidens, with childhood's blush on their cheeks. She offered them wine laced with opium. They took it fearfully from her hands, as they should.

One of them looked at her boldly. The wild smile of the sea on his lips. He didn't drink the wine. She looked into his eyes and she knew him for what he was. How could she not. Like called to like and her great grandfather had been the ocean.

She kissed him. It was a kind of madness. At the end of the celebration of spring, she was going to lay her labrys to his throat and cut him down. Cut them all and pour their most sacred blood into a cup to pour into the earth to propiate the gods. To purchase a day or so for her older brother so he could be let out to see the stars at least. The brother who'd failed to complete Poseidon's sacrifice and become what he'd become as a price.

Here was Poseidon's son.

Bold with eyes like the sea and hands for great deeds. It was as they were kissing, that the red thread broke. She felt it. She felt Asterion break it.

She broke away from this youth. She didn't know his name. Poseidon's son.

He said, "You have to help me kill the monster."

She thought, "Mother will hate that this is Poseidon's son. Father will hate that the Athenians will no longer pay his price." She thought, "I am the monster."

It was a fit of madness that had her saying, "You have to take me and my sister with you."

"Of course," she knew he'd betray her somehow. But she knew that Asterios had broken the thread. He'd done that every year. He'd written a hundred thousand times on the wall his wish to end this. She went with Poseidon's son into the Labyrinth. She couldn't let a stranger do this. She wove a thread out of a drop of her own blood. "Follow me."

Poseidon's son overwhelmed the guards, who were only following her Father's command.

She went one last time into the Labyrinth.

Asterion bellowed to see her with a crown on her head and in all her festival garb. Bellowed to see the stranger with her. Poseidon's son grappled with Asterion, but he need not have. Her brother quieted when he saw the labrys in her hand. It took only one blow to end her brother's suffering. She plucked the dried wreath from the wall. The blood was sticky on her shoes as they came out of the Labyrinth. She eyed Mother's tapestries.

She bundled little Phaedra, half asleep, in one and gave her to Poseidon's son to carry.

She set fire to the wreath and used it to fire the tapestry carpeting the tile floor.

"What are you doing?" asked Poseidon's son.

"Covering our escape." Ariadne was worried that she was wearing Mother's smile as they ran. As she looked at the fading light of the burning palace from the prow of the ship as they set sail.

She pushed it aside by kissing Poseidon's son to remind herself that she was alive. By roughly grappling with him. She supposed it spoke well of him that he was not aroused by murder. He pushed her gently away. "Maybe when you've met my father,"' said Poseidon's son.

A sort of threat, perhaps.

She supposed Oceanid blood was weak in her veins. She quickly grew nauseous with the tossing of the ship as they made their way.

Poseidon's son told her, "We should put ashore until you're well." His smile was bright. A heroes' smile.

She didn't tell him that it would be some five more months waiting with a babe at the end.

She went ashore with the laughing youths and maidens. They sought celebration in a cup of wine. In a lyres and flutes. In laughing dance. The celebration of Anthesteria. The return of the maiden from the Unseen One's realm and back into her mother's care.

Above in the night's sky, a new constellation gleamed in the shape of a bull.

Ariadne raised a cup of well watered wine to the stars. "Rest well, Asterios." She fell asleep on the sandy shore lapped by Poseidon's waves.

The rattle of Apollo's chariot woke her. The needle blades of his light. Dionysus was teasing her with a blade of grass. She snarled. Made the shade of a bush into a tent to get away.

"I said I was wintering a long vintage," said Dionysus crawling into her tent. The scent of fragrant myrrh bloomed within the tent. Intoxicating. Purifying. A perfume for wrapping the dead.

She glared. In madness hit Dionysus, who laughed. She screamed. She shredded her tent of shadow. Grappled and watered them both with tears. As they lay tangled in the tatters, Dionysus whispered in her ear, "Now you have to marry me. After all," Dionysus moved her hands to rest upon both their bellies, "you got me with child when last we coupled, as I did you."

She laughed at the madness of it all. Rested her head on Dionysus' chest. Felt the hard swell of both their bellies.

Dionysus said, "Also, I told Theseus that I'd turn him into a shrub if he took you with him to Athens."

She pulled herself up. Shrouded them both from the sun with her long curls and softer light. Met wine dark eyes with own raging like the sea. "Was that his name? I never asked." Groaned. "He has Phaedra with him."

Dionysus chuckled darkly. "I made threats there too."

She drank from wine wet lips then. Intoxicated herself on madness. Burned away responsibility.

Later, much later, as she woke again in the bower they'd grown of wild grapes and sweet grass, Dionysus said, "Come away with me to Olympus." Then dealt her the killing stroke. "It'll infuriate both your parents."

She had to laugh and really, that was the first step to saying, "Yes," with a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyanopsia  
> http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/Ariadne.html  
> http://www.theoi.com/Ther/TaurosKretaios.html  
> http://www.greeklegendsandmyths.com/androgeus.html  
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanus (has a very nice family tree)  
> http://www.theoi.com/Nymphe/NymphePerseis.html  
> http://www.theoi.com/Titan/Helios.html  
> http://www.theoi.com/Titan/Pasiphae.html   
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterion_(king_of_Crete)  
> http://www.greeklegendsandmyths.com/androgeus.html


End file.
